Breaking News: EarthTalk (a column written by The Environmental Magazine) distributed a column on October 23, 2009 in which cigarette litter was discussed. The “unnamed” author of the article DID NOT CALL OR INTERVIEW ANY MEMBERS of Clean Virginia Waterways' STAFF or VOLUNTEERS yet inserted numerous misleading and highly inaccurate quotes purportedly made by CVW’s executive director, Kathleen Register. The article grossly misrepresents the established position of Clean Virginia Waterways regarding litter prevention as well as Ms. Register’s professional standards. This misuse of a media forum undermines the significant litter prevention efforts that CVW has developed during the past 10 years working with other litter prevention organizations and partners in the tobacco industry. Conservation organizations rely upon the honesty and professionalism of the media to disseminate important information to the public; CVW is disappointed that EarthTalk's article did not meet these standards.

Here are some News
Stories that involve cigarette butt litter. Click
here for newspaper articles about how communities are trying to reduce cigarette
litter. Up-to-date articles about cigarette litter and other tobacco-related
topics can be found on the tobacco.org
website.

Share
your cigarette butt story
Do you have a cigarette litter story to share? Please send an email to cleanva@longwood.edu
and share your story!

"No
One Likes A Butt Head"
Biloxi, MS Sun Herald, January 20, 1999
Biloxi, MS, firefighters are investigating whether a bird caused a fire this
week that spread over several acres in the town. Biloxi Fire Dept. Battalion
Chief Wallace Powell: "It could've been started by a bird that picked
up a lighted cigarette and dropped it. I've seen it happen before. A bird
brought a cigarette to its nest, and a fire started.

ALPINE, Calif.
(Reuters) - A cigarette thrown from a car window by a careless smoker may
have sparked a brush fire that forced hundreds of evacuations and hopscotched
across 11,000 rural acres near San Diego this week, officials said on
Thursday. "It was some kind of smoking material and we're pretty sure
it was a cigarette," said Laura Lowes, a spokeswoman for the California
Department of Forestry. The incident is still under investigation, a San Diego
Sheriff's spokeswoman said.

Efforts to control
the fire appeared to be paying off as the fierce winds that had fueled the
blaze abated. By Thursday afternoon the fire was about 15 percent contained,
as warm Santa Ana winds that raged at speeds up to 65 mph on Wednesday died
down to a tamer 15 mph, Lowes said. Meanwhile, San Diego residents headed
home from work on Thursday under a nut brown sky amid acrid air and chunks
of falling ash, as weary rescue workers braved thick, black smoke to battle
the blaze as it roiled the sparsely populated, mountainous area about 30 miles
north of the city.

It was not known
when the fire would be fully contained, officials said. A local state of emergency
remained in effect for San Diego County. Hundreds of people seen clutching
prized possessions as they were led away Wednesday from an Indian reservation
and from neighborhoods near the fire were allowed to go home late Thursday,
officials said. A
total of four houses were destroyed, said Scott Spinks of the California Department
of Forestry. He said five trailers and four uninhabited buildings were also
destroyed, and it was not known how many of the trailers were used as residences.

About 1,800 federal,
state and local emergency workers fought the flames Thursday. Meanwhile, a
fleet of air tankers and helicopters dropped water and chemicals over 11,000
acres. Several minor injuries, most stemming from smoke inhalation, were reported
at area hospitals, officials said. People with asthma and other lung diseases
were advised to remain indoors.

Firefighting crews
planned to continue working through the night. Fire officials said they were
hampered in some cases by narrow, twisting canyon roads and by efforts to
protect isolated homes and ranches. "When
the winds died down the fire contained itself ... but as soon as the winds
come back embers blow all over the place and all hell breaks loose,"
California Department of Forestry spokesman Ray Cardona said.

The San Diego area
has experienced unseasonably dry weather, hot temperatures and the gusty winds,
all leading to a greater danger of brush fires, National Weather Service (news
- web sites) spokesman Ivory Small said.

2. Cost of Cleaning up cigarette litter

Some Examples:
"School officials say landscapers who should be planting flowers and
pruning shrubs are spending time instead picking up butts on the 15,000-acre
campus: Some 13 landscapers spend 10 hours a week picking up discarded cigarettes
at an estimated cost of $150,000." -- Philadelphia Daily News, March
27, 2000 on Penn State Cigarette Litter Costs

Marshall University
in Huntington:
"Maintenance spends a lot of time picking it up and it seems like we
can't keep up," Dr. K. Edward Grose, vice president of operations, said.
Andrew Sheetz, supervisor of roads and grounds, said a conservative estimate
would be that at least $30,000 is spent by his department alone picking up
cigarettes and other litter. He has one employee who does nothing but pick
up litter and empty trash
from the nearly 100 trash cans around campus, Sheetz said. The worker's salary
alone, not including overtime, benefits or insurance, comes to about $27,000,
Sheetz said."

The CDC studied
146 children aged six months to two years who had ingested cigarettes or cigarette
butts. One-third of them experienced illnessthe most common symptom
reported was vomiting. Most ingestions occurred in homes where children were
exposed to smoke and where cigarettes and ashtrays were kept within the reach
of children.

The study also
found the following:

Children in households
where cigarettes were smoked in their presence were four times as likely to
ingest cigarettes or cigarette butts as children in households where smoking
does not occur around children.
The ages of children in the study who had ingested cigarettes or cigarette
butts were 6-24 months. Among children who had ingested cigarettes or cigarette
butts the highest number of exposures occurred among children aged 6-12 months
(76.7%).

A third of children who ingested cigarettes or cigarette butts developed symptoms.
Spontaneous vomiting occurred among 87 percent of children who developed symptoms.
Other symptoms included nausea, lethargy, gagging, and a pale or flushed appearance.

Click
here to read an article that waspublished
in the August 2000 issue of the American Littoral Society journal, The
Underwater Naturalist. This article, by CVW's Executive Director Kathleen
M. Register, includes background data, such as the fact that 2.1 billion
pounds of cigarette filters were discarded worldwide in 1998, along with
results of her research showing that leached chemicals from cigarette
filters are deadly to the water flea Daphnia magna, a small crustacean
at the lower end of, but important to the aquatic food chain.